The editor of the Mysore Evening Sentinel was a quiet man. His face displayed a transcendental serenity, with eyes that seemed permanently half closed and a moustache that declared its maturity like a handsome banyan tree. His staff in the newspaper’s offices on MG Road read an array of subtle signals into his silences, and over time endowed him with the powers of a mind reader, a clairvoyant and a skilled agony aunt. While in private he would probably have admitted that he was deficient in all of these areas, there was no doubt that in one field he was a true master: leaning back, keeping his ears open and letting warring parties fling prodigious amounts of mud at each other in his presence.
In the course of his many years in the business of local news, he had observed an MLA threaten an Assembly colleague with a bicycle chain; seen the former chairman of the Mysore Regeneration Council slapped by his mistress in a branch of the Canara Bank; and been witness to a number of undignified scenes at the tahsildar’s office. A colourful version of these developments inevitably made it to the front page of the Sentinel. The editor’s finest hour had come a short while after the capture of notorious serial killer Ratpoison Revathi in a marriage hall in Hunsur. The Sentinel website broke the news as a world exclusive and that evening’s paper edition came with a pull-out supplement of India’s most feared lady mass murderers.
The latest public spat attracting the attention of the Sentinel’s journalists concerned the organisers of the first Mysore International Film Festival. The editor had first been alerted to some possible discord when he had noticed the tension between the artistic and programming directors of the festival at a publicity event. As soon as the press conference was over, they each moved to a different section of the room and appeared to be trying to attract an audience of sympathetic supporters. The following morning, Faiza Jaleel was sent to wait outside the Sri Sri Srikantaiah Memorial Hall where the festival’s committee was meeting for further deliberations. While the reporters of the Sentinel had on occasion been accused of shoddy journalism, wanton sensationalism and poor grammar, they had never been known to shy away from the rigours of endless vigils in the corridors of public buildings.
The stated aim of the film festival’s committee was to broaden audience participation in non-commercial forms of cinema and to provide a holistic view of all aspects of the cinematic process. The programme would include the finest art-house offerings in English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali and Odia. A special section on digital films and new media had been mooted but these ambitions were hurriedly thrust aside. It was decided that this particular festival did not aspire to screenings of trendy lesbian romps in Colaba apartments, shot on handheld cameras by returned NRIs trying to make a splash.
Previous discussions had focused on whether the international aspect of the festival should be dropped, given that participation from non-Indian film-makers appeared to be limited to a Maoist comedy from Nepal and a five-hour biopic made by an Iranian resident of Gokulam. Luckily there was one more foreign entry in due course: a Hungarian director’s retelling of the story of the Sirens.
In the offices of the Sentinel, a clearer picture of the Supervisory Committee’s difficulties was emerging. On strict condition of anonymity, a reliable source on the Committee had stated that the trouble began at a cocktail party when the artistic director had criticised the programming director’s approach as overly commercial. Unfortunately the phrase used was ‘shameless Bollywood whore’ and it had been relayed, unmitigated, to the programming director. The injured gentleman had retaliated via a smear campaign accusing the artistic director of nepotism and corruption: the latter’s wife had written the script for one of the films in contention for the closing night gala. Naturally the artistic director, a film historian of some repute, was incensed and had immediately called on his allies on the various sub-committees for their unqualified support. Further accusations and insinuations emerged over the next few months, piquant accounts in the Sentinel marking their passage.
The timing of the current difficulties was calamitous as considerable progress had already been made. The Principal Secretary’s office at the Department of Culture had approved its participation some time ago and communications with the Directorate of Film Festivals were at an advanced stage. The chief sponsors had been confirmed as a mobile phone company and the state’s largest producers of metal casings for electronic equipment.
Matters would probably have deteriorated further without the lucky intervention of a Singapore-based private bank, which agreed to step in as an additional main sponsor. The unexpected availability of further funds seemed to achieve a sudden convergence in the artistic vision of the two camps. In a matter of days, email subject headings became more optimistic, the event’s organisers were given concrete instructions and a number of press events were hastily arranged.
It was decided that the festival opening gala would be held at the Anuraag Kalakshetra in December, at the height of the tourist season. The film chosen as the first screening was billed as a ‘futuristic jehadi chamber drama’ made by a prominent Malayali director who was apparently returning to form. As the festival took shape and publicity grew, a renaissance began to take place among the city’s cultural stewards. Moribund projects were steered back to drawing boards, new funding applications were completed and a whole series of suggestions made themselves known on the letters page of the Sentinel. A novel exhilaration spread even to the Mysore Tourism Authority. Further soul-searching at Authority meetings had not yielded a fitting alternative to the ‘Geneva of the East’ theme; now the film festival’s celebration of cinema at the edge of Tejasandra Lake seemed a brilliant opportunity to showcase the whole of Mysore in a jubilant lakeside setting.
A few weeks later the Authority called a press conference of its own where, in rhapsodic association with its commercial partners, it announced that Mysore’s first Lake Utsava would take place on the Tejasandra Promenade, the day after the film festival’s opening gala. A fitting prelude to the construction of HeritageLand, the Utsava would present a diverse selection of the city’s talents along the lake shore, planting exhibitions of the work of local artists next to a Carnatic music tent, displays of street theatre alongside a parade of vintage cars. A dance stage featuring exponents of bharatanatyam and kuchipudi, a yoga fair, the obligatory food mela and a handicrafts bazaar would all be incorporated into the revelries.
The timetable was tight and the countdown had begun. Nominations to various new committees were finalised; site inspections were made; stakeholders, willing or not, were identified. The sap of a certain section of Mysore society began to spit and swirl through channels formerly clogged by indecision and civic torpor. HeritageLand or not, Mysore was preparing to face the world.
The first sprigs of intimacy revealed themselves in code, arrangements that both Jaydev and Susheela knew were crucial but which were never discussed. Susheela was taken aback to hear his voice the first time that he called, her surprise feathered by an enigmatic thrill. In the course of that first phone call, Jaydev did not say how he had got her number or on what pretext. But she had no doubt that the enquiry would have been made with a stolid discretion. That phone call had led to a few others, all made and received with the ease of a casual friendship but, for Susheela at any rate, ringed with the shards of a jagged anticipation. They did not speak of why they did not meet, despite living only fifteen minutes away. Their conversations took form around roomy imagined recesses that could accommodate any number of quirks of conduct or confession.
As the conversations unspooled, Susheela was surprised to find herself the target of friendly accusations and the butt of the most obvious jokes. It was an attention that was new, distracting and delicious. When Jaydev called, Susheela went into her bedroom, shut the door and settled onto the divan facing the windows. She was sure that Uma was completely uninterested in her phone calls but why take a chance? It was, she knew, ridiculous to even be thinking of risks or chances; her conversations with a seventy-year-old retired lawyer should concern absolutely no one else.
What was most surprising to Susheela was the number of conversations that they unlocked. She had not realised that she had that much to say. But the anecdotes and observations plunged out, a spontaneous flow that at first embarrassed her and then invigorated her. She found herself talking about Sridhar with an aching avidity, realising that some need to give voice to their life together had come fizzing up to the surface. Jaydev seemed genuinely interested in a man he would never meet and long-forgotten events began to lodge themselves in Susheela’s ken from a distant space.
‘After so many years of being together, I never thought about what it would be like to live without him. Even when he was very ill and we knew he would not survive, I didn’t think about what it would be like. I was just too busy, there was always something to organise or I felt that I had to try and keep his spirits up.’
‘And then it hits you weeks or months after they have gone.’
‘Exactly. But I should have tried to be more mentally prepared; it’s my own fault in a way. My daughter Priyanka always says that I have no imagination and she’s probably right.’
‘But how can you imagine loss, I mean real loss, until you experience it?’
‘I don’t know. But I just can’t get away from the feeling that there must have been something I could have done to be better prepared.’
On another occasion she described to Jaydev those first tentative moments in her married life when she and Sridhar were still trying to map each other’s emotional contours. Two months after their marriage, Sridhar had been transferred to Bhopal, the first in a series of moves that would eventually lead him to the position of Director of Finance for the whole of House of Govind. They had arrived at the staff quarters, only to be informed by the caretaker that part of the ceiling had collapsed in the bungalow assigned to them. They had been quite prepared to spend a few weeks in the company guesthouse until the house was rendered habitable again. But Mr Mishra, Sridhar’s new boss, had been adamant that he would not commission such an injustice. A bulky man with glistening hair that looked like it had been squeezed out of a tube in little curlicues on to his head, he had insisted that the couple stay with him and his wife; otherwise he would never be able to forgive himself. Mrs Mishra had been less welcoming. A tall, joyless woman, like a length of driftwood wrapped in a silk sari, she had coldly fixed her gaze on the fragments of ceiling plaster while her husband put his arm around Sridhar’s shoulder and ushered him towards a waiting Ambassador.
Sridhar and Susheela reluctantly spent six weeks staying with the Mishras. Any attempt at negotiating a passage to the company guesthouse was met by a jovial but solid admonishment from Mr Mishra and a disbelieving snort from his wife. It was a strange and unexpected beginning to their married life. Susheela’s mornings were spent trying unsuccessfully to engage Mrs Mishra in conversation or following the cook around the enormous kitchen while he tried to shake her off.
In the afternoons Mrs Mishra went to her kitty parties, to which Susheela was pointedly not invited. She would lie on the bed in the spare room, under the hypnotic rotations of the ceiling fan, looking at the Constable print on the wall and listening to the sounds of Mrs Mishra’s departure: sharp instructions to the maid, the turn of the lock in the fridge, the padlock being clipped into the telephone dial, the drawing of the curtains in the sitting room against the afternoon glare and the clicking of her heels on the mosaic floor towards the front door.
The evenings were only slightly better. The two couples would engage in a disjointed quadrille on the veranda, Mr Mishra encouraging Sridhar to join him in ‘a bit of one’s favourite poison’ while Mrs Mishra stared grimly at the receding level of whiskey in the bottle. In between frenetic periods of warding off mosquitoes, Susheela would disappear into long reveries that drew her into reassuring tableaux of life as a normal newly married couple. Sridhar would end the evening lavishly drunk, having attempted to keep up with Mr Mishra in his enthusiastic consumption and unintelligible career advice. As the darkness around them grew into a star-strewn shroud, the boy would bring plate after plate of snacks that went untouched.
After the couples had retired for the night, Sridhar would apologise for their predicament, promising that if the ceiling was not fixed in a week, he would quit his job and they would leave Bhopal for good. Susheela would nod distractedly, listening to the telltale pitch of the voices that could be heard on the other side of the bedroom wall: Mr Mishra’s wheezing explanations that sounded like a broken harmonium and the snapping of sun-baked twigs that could only be Mrs Mishra’s clipped retorts.
‘So, can you imagine, if you bumped into Mrs Mishra today?’ Jaydev asked.
‘Oh God, please don’t even say that as a joke. You know, I think I’d have to tell her that, regardless of her best efforts, I managed to pick my way into her fridge every afternoon and eat one of her horrible imported chocolate hearts.’
Jaydev’s wife, Debashree, had suffered a stroke eight years ago and died a few months later. At the first mention of his late wife, Susheela found herself in foreign territory, her normal social equilibrium deserting her. Would it seem inappropriate for her to display greater curiosity or would a delicate circumvention of the topic appear uncaring? It suddenly dawned on her that men in their seventies with dead wives were not her forte. But Jaydev required neither prompting nor guiding. His allusions were brief but numerous.
Jaydev had known his wife, Debashree, at college. She was the first girl in his year to have her hair cut short and arrive at college on a bicycle. They had married in spite of the objections of Jaydev’s mother, who for years afterwards spent hours detailing disastrous predictions for their future in her letters to him. He had once shown Debashree a letter in which his mother had claimed that not only would his wife abandon their children one day, she would do so by running off with one of her dissolute colleagues at the Institute of Education. Debashree’s reaction had been typically brassy. She had written to her mother-in-law, setting out in laborious detail the combination of defects in each of her male colleagues that rendered them unsuitable for adulterous couplings.
The telephone wrapped Susheela and Jaydev in the folds of its invisibility, giving them a safe haven for their pauses and reflections. An hour would pass, sometimes two or three, before Susheela emerged from the bedroom, her capillaries swollen with the sound of Jaydev’s measured voice, his quizzical teasing and that almost inaudible chuckle.
‘Are you an only child?’ he had once asked her.
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘I can tell. You have that constant watchfulness that an only child has.’
‘I am a sixty-four-year-old widow with knee pain and you think I have the constant watchfulness of an only child?’
She felt almost gratified when he had laughed so hard that it brought on a choking fit.
The gloom inside the room was so dense that it had a texture, like cotton wool ripped from a bale. Through the open window Mala could hear rainwater dripping off the roof into the choked gutter, the last sobs of the dying downpour. She looked at the clock on the bedside table. It was still only eleven o’clock. At half past nine she had called the office to let them know that she would not be coming in. Shipra had answered the phone, sounding bored and distant.
‘Okay fine, are you coming in tomorrow? Actually, just hang on. Mr Tanveer wants to talk to you,’ she had said.
‘Ms Mala? What is the matter, not feeling well? What exactly seems to be the problem?’
Mala had explained that she had a migraine and, she thought, a temperature.
‘That is most unfortunate, Ms Mala. Have you taken the opinion of a good doctor? Oh, I see. Well, you must not neglect these matters, of course. But I am sure that you will recover very soon; after all, you have youth on your side, not like us old fuddy-duddies. Shipra will call you later today to make sure you are not in need of anything. But in any case, I am sure we will see you tomorrow, isn’t it?’
Mala lay in bed, looking at the damp patch where the wall met the ceiling. The surface of the wall had bubbled up like a pancake and now little flakes dangled over the dusty suitcases shoved on top of the cupboard. The last time they had been used was on the honeymoon to Ooty. On returning, as Mala had stood on the bed, reaching up to push them against the wall, she had suspected they might not be required again for a long time. She had been right. But now Girish had become obsessed with the idea of a trip to Sri Lanka, an indulgence they could not afford and which, as far as Mala could tell, held no significant attraction for either of them. The thought of following Girish around ruins or beaches far away from home made her want to cocoon herself away. It was taking every strand of equanimity to pilot her way through her everyday existence; the anxiety that would be engendered by new experiences on distant shores was terrifying.
There was a knock at the door. Gayathri had said she would be late today. Mala got out of bed and let her in. As usual, there was minimal conversation. Mala returned to the bedroom, sinking down on the sheets that seemed to have sucked in the moisture from the walls. She could hear Gayathri opening the windows in the sitting room.
She turned on to her side, away from the window, desperately tired but knowing sleep would not come. Living a secret life made innumerable claims. Every day she had to guard against the erosion of her will with a heightened watchfulness, induced at great cost and leaving her winded.
Mala had considered leaving Girish, but her conception of leaving was shapeless. It was only a vaguely sensed mood, not something that could yet be termed a real choice. She stumbled at the first steps, trying to recall a time before the essence of her life became violence and humiliation, alternating with boredom. The intervals between Girish’s random acts of cruelty should have been periods of relief. But an enormous tedium took over and battered her with its slow, steady beat: the routine tasks that Mr Tanveer assigned her, looking equal parts stricken and suspicious; the organisation of life in that dark house, with its corners full of contempt and derision; Girish’s lengthy speeches, girdling a subject on which he had decided she needed instruction.
Yet thoughts of any alternatives left her incapacitated, a sharp chill penetrating into her bones. When she married, Mala had made a mental break with her maternal home and Konnapur. She had departed for the legitimacy of adulthood. Picturing herself at home with her parents again was impossible, if it meant returning to Konnapur with nothing to show for her married life but the corrosive shame of her inability to make her husband love her.
Gayathri stuck her head around the door.
‘Not well? What’s the matter?’ she asked.
‘Headache.’
‘Shall I quickly do the floor here?’
‘No, just leave it. You can do it tomorrow.’
Gayathri nodded and walked to the bathroom, tunelessly humming a song; an odd sound that lay somewhere between a gasp and a croak.
The old man next door turned on his radio. His sitting-room window was so close to Mala’s bedroom window that she could have stretched her arm out over the low wall and touched it. A radio play was in progress. A woman had been accused of infidelity and she was proclaiming her innocence. The tremors in her voice were wrapped in a static echo as she tried to defend herself against her accusers. A smooth baritone cut in, a voice with the lacquered timbre that made it ideal for radio. His mother and his brother had discovered the truth, said the male voice, and he preferred to believe the people who shared his blood, rather than a stray he had rescued and married out of misguided compassion. The wife’s denials began afresh, swearing that she could never betray a man who had been so kind to her.
Gayathri walked into the room again.
‘Finished for today. I’ll see you tomorrow then.’
‘Wait, can you do something for me before you go? Can you get me some tablets from the medical shop? Here take this chit, I’ve written down what I need.’
Gayathri nodded and reached for the note and the money. She turned to leave but then stopped.
‘Not everything can be cured by a tablet, you know.’
Mala propped herself up on her arms: ‘Meaning?’
‘Nothing. I’ll be back in five minutes. You better take some rest.’
With that, Gayathri left the room.
The lunchtime rush had thinned out at the Vishram Coffee House. The two public-sector bank officials had decided to take a late lunch and were at their usual table.
‘That Prakash called me yesterday,’ said the senior official, his eyes narrowing.
‘What for, sir?’
‘By mistake. I got the call but I didn’t recognise the number. I answered it anyway and you know what?’
‘No sir, what?’
‘He asked me who I am. He calls me and he asks me who I am. Can you believe?’
‘That man has no shame, sir.’
‘Who is he to phone me and demand to know who I am?’
‘His character is not at all good, sir. His background also.’
‘I recognised his voice at once.’
‘Did you tell him who you were, sir?’
‘No, why should I? He is the one who called me. He should tell me who he is first.’
‘Hundred per cent correct, sir.’
‘If he calls me again and asks me who I am, I will really let him have it. Kappalakke yeradu.’
‘No shame, sir. You can never teach such third-class people.’
‘Can you believe how much they have started charging here for extra rice?’
‘It’s fully looting, sir.’
‘Che.’
‘Sir, this HeritageLand? You think it will ever be built?’
‘Why not? Once those farmers shut their mouths, I have full faith in that project.’
‘It says in the paper today that the Mughal Waterworld will be one of the greatest examples of engineering ever seen.’
‘Very possible. We are the mother of invention, you know. Algebra, buttons, snakes and ladders, all invented here. Also, one rupee shampoo sachets and idli manchurian.’
‘Very true, sir.’
‘And let me tell you another thing, it will be a great opportunity for this city. I mean, who had heard of Florida before Disney World?’
‘Nobody, sir.’
‘What was there before?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Just swamps and a few crocodiles. Now look at it.’
The junior bank official left the table to wash his hands and returned, wiping them with a neatly pressed handkerchief.
‘Sir, they say that inflation has gone into negative figures – deflation.’
‘My foot. They use some godforsaken measure that includes nothing useful that people buy. No food, no medical, no rent. I think it only counts made-in-China mobile phones, which are the only things coming down in price.’
‘Alwa, sir, seriously. You tell the aam aadmi that the government thinks prices are only falling, what will he say?’
‘Nothing. He will nod like a sheep and say, “No problem, sir; whatever you say, sir.” People in this country will just accept anything. The things that go on here, you think they could happen in any other country?’
‘No, sir. It is our cursed fate.’
‘For example, you have some gangster with twenty criminal cases pending in various courts. He decides to stand for election and knows he will win because he will bribe all the fools in his constituency to vote for him. Saris, TVs, cash, liquor, whatever rubbish you give them, they will happily accept and shut their mouths for a few days.’
‘This has really happened in Tamil Nadu, sir.’
‘It is happening everywhere. Then after he is elected, he can make sure none of his cases ever come to court. And if by chance some even bigger political gangster manages to send him to the lock-up, he will send his son or daughter-in-law or grandson’s donkey to take his place at the next election and the whole thing will go on like that.’
‘Every criminal politician says he has been framed by his political opponents.’
‘Of course. Are we all fools to believe that every single MP is spending his time doctoring video tapes and finding impersonators so that he can fake all the evidence? Even our movie writers can’t be as skilled at creating these stories as our netas.’
‘India Whining.’
‘India Pining.’
‘Okay, enough. Get the bill.’
The phone had hardly stopped ringing that afternoon. If it was not an irritating press officer trying to elicit a comment, it was an underling from the Superintending Engineer’s office seeking a definitive version of the morning’s events. Girish, in turn, had asked two members of his team to try to put together an accurate report but they appeared to be floundering in their usual inefficiency.
The only objectively verifiable piece of information was that at about eleven o’clock that morning, a group of unidentified persons had descended on the electricity supply company office at Neelam Layout, an unfortunate South Mysore locality that had only been supplied with sixteen hours of power in the last four days. It was from this very point that accounts began to differ. A manager at the Neelam Layout office stated that an angry mob had torn into the building, smashed windows, ransacked a filing cabinet, damaged computer equipment and stolen the caretaker’s bicycle. A bystander, on the other hand, told a news channel that the protestors had simply stood outside the building, chanting and holding placards, until the security guards had begun to taunt and insult their mothers, prompting a lengthy scuffle. One of Girish’s colleagues reported that he had received a call from someone who was sure that there had been an attempt to burn down the building.
Girish slammed the phone down, having just informed an officer at the Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission that he would revert to her as soon as he was able to ascertain the precise nature and magnitude of the morning’s incidents.
‘This kind of thing would only happen somewhere like Neelam Layout,’ he spat.
‘I heard that they were accusing us of purposely not providing them with electricity because it is a Muslim area,’ said his colleague Ganesh.
‘Such fools. As if we can just disconnect Muslim areas even if we wanted to.’
‘When people are angry, they will believe anything.’
‘Anyway, they get more than their fair share of electricity. Who asked them all to have four wives and twenty children? Always first to start complaining about anything.’
Ganesh doubted that the consumption of electricity per household in Neelam Layout was higher than in any other fatigued and forsaken part of Mysore but was reluctant to feed Girish’s ill temper. It would only result in an afternoon of snide remarks and some petty retribution later in the week.
The story was destined to make it to the front page of the Mysore Evening Sentinel. Some of its readers were relieved to note that the accompanying editorial had decided to present the incident as the natural consequence of bureaucratic incompetence and poor governance rather than a clash of divided communities.
‘Our state government, in connivance with our electricity companies, has only now decided to close the stable door, by stating it will try to purchase additional power from other states,’ lamented the piece. ‘Unfortunately for the public, not only has the horse bolted, it has been found, sold off secretly through the good offices of a series of corrupt middlemen and the funds transferred via hawala brokers to a benami Swiss bank account. Such is the nature of official planning and foresight in Karnataka today.’
With that picturesque image, the editor of the Mysore Evening Sentinel managed to capture a number of societal ills in his forceful conclusion. The editorial did little to improve Girish’s humour that afternoon.
‘Susheelaji? It’s Jaydev calling here.’
He always announced himself in a cautious way, as if still undecided as to whether he ought to be calling.
‘Hello, one minute, one minute … so how are you today?’
‘I’ve just come back from a long walk so feeling very relaxed and refreshed. And you?’
‘Oh fine, I’ve been meaning to visit an old friend for ages now but something keeps coming up. I was just wondering whether I should go today. It’s one of my days for the driver, you see.’
‘I’m sorry, am I delaying you?’
‘No no, not at all. It takes me an hour to get out of the house these days anyway. Making sure everything is locked, switched off, closed, bolted. It’s ridiculous.’
‘Sometimes I do wonder. Maybe you have things to do and then I call and take up so much of your time.’
‘Please Jaydevji, I am not Sunaina, rushing off to meetings every five minutes. I really don’t know how she does it. Even the thought of it makes me tired.’
‘Well, she’s younger, but it’s true, so much energy. She reminds me of a person I used to know, my senior at my first job in Calcutta. He was also always running around from one committee to another, pushing bundles of paper into an old jhola he used to carry everywhere.’
‘This was in Calcutta?’
‘Yes, in the fifties. In fact, he even had the same hairstyle as Sunaina.’
‘Now you are just being rude.’
‘No, really, I promise you. Poor fellow, he must be no more, but if in those days he ever had a tendency to wear saris, he would have looked just like Sunaina. You know, us juniors always used to make fun of him. He had a habit of using long words even when he had no idea of the meaning. He must have just thought that it sounded impressive.’
‘I think that is a habit many of us Indians have. Also, why use one word when we can shower you with ten?’
‘No, but poor old Mr Mukherjee was really something. He would walk up to you and say: “I have a small piece of work for you. Very interesting. I am sure you will find it highly obstreperous.” Or else: “Such terrible weather we are having. Truly sybaritic.” After we had lost our initial nervousness in that place, my friend Shailendra and I would keep going up to him and using our own ridiculous words in conversation. I feel bad now; he must have thought we were just two such friendly chaps.’
‘You should feel bad! Poor old Mr Mukherjee. And I can imagine you and your friend laughing like hyenas the moment his back was turned.’
‘I wish I could deny that. But that is exactly what we did.’
‘Well, I won’t tell Sunaina that she reminds you of some poor man that you all used to laugh at years ago. It reminds me of my uncle who also had a very particular way with words. He was a professor of history at Mysore University. If any of the women in the family had put on weight he would smile and say: “You are looking nice and robust, much better than the last time I saw you. Then you were looking very inadequate.” The thing was, he really meant it in a nice way.’
‘But he never said it to any of the men?’
‘No, but I think the men always looked more than adequate.’
‘No doubt. So, what time are you going to see your friend?’
‘I don’t know. I’m not even sure if she’s here or with her daughter. I need to phone and check. I feel very bad for her, you know. She has a very nasty daughter-in-law so she tries to spend as little time in Mysore as possible. But what to do? She has to come from time to time to see her son.’
‘The usual saas-bahu story?’
‘Who knows what exactly goes on? But the daughter-in-law seems to really hate her coming so goes out of her way to make things difficult. Jaya, my friend, doesn’t eat brinjal, and she was saying that the last time she stayed there, this girl was making brinjal day and night.’
A swallowed gurgle from Jaydev stopped Susheela.
‘It may be funny for you because you are not the one being ill-treated. I hope your daughter-in-law treats you well.’
‘Actually, when I visit she is more considerate than my son, even. But anyway, please continue with your story.’
‘Jaya has to use a special foot cream. She used to keep it in the bathroom when she was staying with her son but she is convinced that her daughter-in-law kept hiding it.’
‘She was hiding the foot cream?’
‘Well, it kept disappearing and who else would take it? So now she has to keep it locked in her suitcase. I mean, is it right, that she has to hide her foot cream in her own son’s house?’
‘I think the best thing would be for you not to delay seeing her. She needs your support.’
‘It really is very upsetting for her. A while back her daughter-in-law dropped a wet grinder and it almost fell on Jaya’s foot. She is convinced that it was deliberate.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, she mentioned it again yesterday: “Susheela, do you remember when that girl tried to murder me with the wet grinder?”’
‘Do you think it was deliberate?’
‘Well, the girl is most insensitive but I don’t think she is a psychopath. Although I suppose it is difficult to tell with young women these days, they all seem so confident.’
‘Poor Jaya.’
‘Let me tell you one thing, Mr Jaydev: we should be pleased with what we have and not demand too much. My son-in-law may be messy and moody but at least he has never tried to kill me. Anyway, enough for today; I am going now. Just thank God for all your blessings.’
A young doctor emerged from the front of SG Hospital, trailed by a group of nervous, pleading relatives hoping for a second’s reassurance before he disappeared behind a closed door again. The doctor walked quickly towards his motorbike and sped off through the gates, his face inscrutable. The hospital was located on a busy road near Tilak Nagar, a squat, desecrated building, once a soft pink, now the colour of wet ash. At the back of the hospital, a series of puddles held their daily consignments of used syringes and soiled bandages.
The reception area was crammed with people. Every seat was taken, weary shapes leant against the walls or squatted on the floor, and a large crush surrounded the receptionists. The room smelt of close bodies, damp cloth and something sulphurous that was making its way in through the open doors. On the wall behind the receptionists, a picture of Mahatma Gandhi hung askew, his eyes decorously avoiding the scene below him.
Uma had not been able to speak to either of the receptionists. She asked a porter to point out the way to the ladies’ general wards and followed the direction of his disinterested thumb. The corridor light blinked on and off, sousing the walls with a pale green glow. Through the first open doorway Uma glimpsed the dingy ward, mysterious smears and streaks on the floor, filthy sheets trailing off the beds. A young girl seated at the entrance to the ward stared up at her with enormous eyes. She walked past the girl, looking at the inhabitants of the beds, seeking out Bhargavi. Torpid gazes, inert forms, sapped spirits: Uma took in the desolate parade of patients, trying to draw as little attention to herself as possible, a woman with good health and an upright bearing.
She walked across to the next ward and saw more faces, degraded and decaying, but not the one she was seeking. At the end of the corridor a dark stairway led to the wards on the upper floors. A ghostly form brushed against her legs as she walked up the stairs, making her cry out. In the near darkness she could make out a family of skeletal cats that seemed to have colonised this part of the hospital. She hurried up the stairs, two at a time, not wanting to touch the banister.
The second floor passage was in darkness too. Grimy rubber mats were strewn across the floor and a number of bodies huddled against the walls. Uma shut her eyes for a few seconds to try to accustom herself to the gloom. She turned into the next ward where, unexpectedly, all the fluorescent lights were working. As she stood uncomfortably between the rows of beds, someone grabbed her wrist.
‘Uma, isn’t it? How did you know she’s here?’
It was the distant cousin for whom Bhargavi had found work in Mahalakshmi Gardens, days after starting there herself. Uma had only met her once and had forgotten her name.
‘She hasn’t been to work for three days and I found out from amma that there had been an accident and she was in hospital,’ said Uma.
‘Accident? Accident, my foot,’ said the cousin angrily, still holding on to Uma’s wrist. ‘Come see what those animals have done to her.’
Uma let herself be pulled along the length of the ward. Bhargavi was in a bed near the far end, her leg in a cast. A bandage covered most of her head and her right eye was a shattered purple bulb.
Uma gasped and covered her mouth with her hand.
‘What happened? How did this happen?’
Bhargavi turned her head, her left eye blinking in recognition. She moved her swollen lips laboriously.
‘Come sit,’ she said, patting the edge of the bed.
Uma drew closer to the bed, her hand still locked over her mouth.
Bhargavi’s cousin lowered her voice: ‘It was on Thursday night. She had gone to the factory to talk to those girls as usual and a few of them went with her to the bus stand. She spoke to them there for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes and then she walked down to the other stop where she gets her bus.’
Uma listened while keeping her eyes on Bhargavi’s crushed face.
The cousin continued: ‘Then some woman called out to her and asked her to come with her. She said she was having a problem with the factory owners. Bhargavi had never seen her before but she went with her anyway. You know what she’s like.’
The cousin stopped speaking, her teeth biting down hard on her bottom lip. Uma took her hand in hers.
The woman had led Bhargavi through a warren of twisting lanes into a four-storey building that appeared to house another garment factory on its ground floor. They had climbed the stairs, the woman all the while looking nervously behind her as she told Bhargavi that she was desperately in need of help. There was only one vast room on the top floor, empty except for a few crates and bolts of cloth propped up against one wall. A moment later, three men had appeared from one corner of the room, slammed the door shut and set upon Bhargavi. She dropped to the floor. The last thing she remembered before losing consciousness was the strange silence in the room, broken only by the sound of their kicks, like the muffled bounce of fruit falling on grass. A passer-by had heard Bhargavi’s groans in an alley later that night and found her under a pile of soggy cardboard boxes.
Bhargavi’s left eye blinked again, as if to confirm the story. She tried to speak but winced instead.
‘I’ll give her this tablet for the pain. It’s been a few hours,’ said her cousin, reaching into a brown paper bag. ‘I have not seen even one doctor on this floor for two days. You have to do everything yourself. Yesterday I had to bribe a nurse thirty rupees to change the bandage.’
‘But who was that woman? And those men? Had you seen them before?’ asked Uma.
Bhargavi shut her eye and opened it again in response.
Her cousin responded: ‘They were definitely people from the factory owner’s side. But who can tell where they are or who they are?’
‘Did you go to the police?’
‘I went to register an FIR day before yesterday. They said they would send someone here to take a statement but no one has come.’
Neither of them mentioned their virtual certainty that no one would come either today or the day after.
Bhargavi managed to whisper: ‘I didn’t think they would go this far.’
‘Don’t speak, akka, don’t speak,’ said her cousin, placing a hand on the only corner of Bhargavi’s forehead untouched by the bandage.
Uma shook her head slowly, looking from Bhargavi to her cousin.
In the bed opposite them, a woman shifted and turned to face them. Her face was a patchy yellow and drained of all expression. It was clear though that she had turned to better hear their conversation.
‘I think I should go. If it starts raining, the buses …’ said Uma.
‘Yes, you should go. It was good that you came,’ said Bhargavi, through almost closed lips.
Uma nodded, gently cupped Bhargavi’s elbow and then touched her cousin’s shoulder. She turned and walked quickly down the corridor, slowing down to negotiate the dark stairs and then quickening her pace again towards the main exit. The rain had started to fall already and a large pool had formed between the exit and the gates. Uma joined the throng at the main doors, all waiting for a short lull in the downpour. Beyond the gates, the fruit and vegetable vendors had pulled sheets of plastic over their carts and were taking shelter in the doorways of shops and in the porch of the nearby Health and Family Welfare Institute building. The rain poured over the roof of Bethesda Church and hammered away on the tops of the tin sheets that covered the rows of cobblers and key-cutters lining Puthli Park Road.
Uma and others at the main doors turned in the direction of a series of shouts and drumbeats. In spite of the torrent, a procession was making its way along Puthli Park Road and approaching the hospital. At the head of the group, a huge Ganesha idol mounted on a tractor rumbled past, its pink and purple hues blazing through the dreary slush. The group was probably on its way to the Shiva temple tank where the idol would be immersed in its dark waters. As the drumming grew louder, the men following the tractor leapt into the air, the heavy showers increasing their abandon.
The charge in the air was infectious. A man standing beside Uma tucked his fingers into his mouth and let out a series of sharp blasts in time to the drumming. Many in the throng began to clap and there were more whistles and shouts. The scenes inside the hospital were forgotten as the frenetic impulses of the procession took over. A couple of young men dashed into the pool of water in front of the hospital and began to kick up a fierce splash. Another burst of applause broke out in the group sheltering from the storm.
A roar went up from the men in the procession. The idol’s head was caught in the low-hanging branches of a tamarind tree. The drumbeats grew more urgent as the tractor driver, assisted by another man, tried to scythe away the foliage with a stick. A few more men ran towards the tractor from the hospital to assist in the release of Ganesha’s head. Around the tractor the dancing continued as the water beat down. When the idol was finally free, most of the stragglers sheltering by the hospital doors surged forward towards the road. Uma watched as the pounding and yelling managed to drown out even the sound of the rain. The tractor started up again and resumed its imperious progress towards the temple tank.
Mala’s phone began to shudder on the bed, the screen lighting up. She broke through the surface of her torpor and picked it up. It was Ambika.
‘What happened to you? Amma said you’re not well.’
‘It’s nothing. Just a bit of fever.’
‘Are you looking after yourself properly? You seem to be falling sick a lot more these days. Have you been for a check-up to see if you’re anaemic?’
‘I am not anaemic. Must be the weather change or something.’
‘You should have a blood test anyway.’
Ambika had begun to believe firmly in her own diagnostic abilities, acquired in the course of managing her husband’s nursing home. As her home and professional life prospered, her confidence in her opinions and pronouncements had grown proportionately. She now tended to begin sentences with the phrase: ‘I have very often found …’ A chronicle of Ambika’s astute observations would follow, accompanied by instructions to her listener on steps for the future. There had been early signs of these interventions. At the age of twelve, Ambika had discovered that a group of students were operating an examination syndicate, receiving papers leaked by a teacher and selling them on for a sizeable profit. Her alertness led to prompt action by the school authorities, a Good Citizen award from the municipal council in Konnapur and endless recitations of the sequence of events for the benefit of family and friends, while her mother served plate after plate of lentil vadas.
As Ambika suggested various therapeutic alternatives, Mala felt a sudden and extreme restlessness swell her skin. She sat up and swung her legs off the bed, desperate for her sister to stop talking.
‘I’m fine. Tomorrow I’m going to the office, so there’s nothing wrong with me.’
Ambika sounded unconvinced but let the matter rest. Instead, she began to talk about the difficulties she was facing in finding competent staff, despite the generous rates she was willing to pay. Mala looked at the leaden sky through the window, making non-committal sounds at regular intervals. She was annoyed now, her primary impulse being to hurt Ambika in some way, confounding that voice into silence.
‘How is Girish?’
Ambika always asked this question as if she knew very well that Girish was exactly the way he always was, pompous and sneering, but she would not be the one to be accused of shirking her duty by not asking after his well-being. His superior attitude was a genuine mystery to Ambika and not one that she pondered in silence. She had observed to Mala more than once that Girish may have read a lot of books but he was still a babu in a small office in Mysore, living in that dark, airless house in Sitanagar, while everyone else in India was now ready to lock eyes with the rest of the world.
Ambika’s chatter continued. Mala responded with her set of stock responses, another accomplished performance designed to remove any doubts in the minds of her family.
‘So, what other news from your side?’ asked Ambika.
‘Nothing much. We’ll be busy the next few weeks, helping Anand and Lavanya when they shift.’
‘They are shifting? Where to?’
‘A huge house in a new complex. You should see this place. It has everything, two swimming pools, shopping mall, cinema.’
Mala could not remember the precise nature of the other attractions at Terra Blanca and decided to endow it with a few of her own: ‘I think there’s also a golf course and a waterfall.’
‘Have they sold their old house?’
‘No, I think they’ll keep that too. Why sell if you don’t need to, no?’
‘Have you seen the new house?’
‘Oh yes. It’s like a place from some movie. They even have their own school and fire department.’
‘Why do they need their own fire department? Who will be setting fire to their house every day?’
‘They have made it so that they can live with complete peace of mind.’
There was a pause as Ambika digested this information.
‘So how much did they pay for it? Any idea?’
‘I don’t know the exact amount. But crores. Crores and crores for anything in that complex.’
‘Why do they need you to help them shift? They can get some professionals, no?’
‘Yes, but they will need help supervising. And we had to offer. Especially since they are taking us to Thailand.’
Mala was enjoying herself now. She mentioned Thailand with a flighty nonchalance, like it was a neighbourhood attraction.
‘Thailand? Why?’
‘What do you mean why? For a holiday, why else?’
There was a further pause as Ambika tried to make sense of this new revelation.
‘For the company, na? So generous of them. But they are lucky. God has really blessed them, not like you and me, having to count everything.’
Ambika huffed but made no other comment.
‘So how long are you all going for?’ she asked a few seconds later.
‘Nothing has been fixed yet, but I think three weeks.’
‘Three weeks?’
Mala searched for further colour that she could add to their holiday plans.
‘It’s so exciting for me, leaving India for the first time and that too all first-class air fare.’
‘But will you be able to be with Lavanya for that long? I mean, it’s not easy, no?’
‘I have come to know the true side of Lavanya.’
‘So arrogant, no? Whenever you see her, sleeveless blouse and cooling glass. Someone should kick her.’
‘No no, you’re so wrong. You just need to get to know her. We have become very close after spending so much time together and she really is such a wonderful person.’
Ambika became subdued and after a few more minutes discussing Anand and Lavanya’s new home she became aware of a few matters that required her immediate attention. In any case, she had only called Mala to find out if she needed anything; she would ring again for a proper chat some other time. Moments after she had ended the call with Mala, she dialled her husband’s extension. She intended to find out as soon as possible whether it was really conceivable that there were housing complexes in Mysore with their own fire departments.
The rain had been coming down for a few hours now but the skies still seethed. Shankar was sodden, the water running into his shirt, down his torso and dripping from his jeans. He had peeled off his light windcheater and shoved it under the seat of his motorbike, finding its clammy grip oppressive. He wheeled the motorbike into the shelter of an abandoned lean-to and, tucking a small package under his arm, began to trudge through the mud churned up by the side of the road. He always found these rows difficult to negotiate, with nothing to distinguish them, apart from perhaps a tangle of wire or a damaged bicycle left at the entrance. Today matters were much worse. The rain was sweeping into his eyes and some of the lanes were hidden under a foot of water. He thought of turning back but decided to brave the conditions. It was the last box of sweets and Janaki would be furious if she found out that he had come this far without going on to see Uma.
Janaki had given birth ten days ago. The baby boy had arrived two weeks late, weighing in at eight pounds, with a full head of hair and a breathtaking disdain for his new surroundings. Luckily the birth had not matched the terrifying scenarios that friends had described to him, although he had chosen not to point this out to Janaki. The last few days had been overwhelming: a culmination of ambitions; an indication that dignity and gravitas had finally claimed him. He was now a man.
Shankar needed to finish distributing sweets to friends and family and he had picked the week’s most inhospitable day. As he descended into the flooded sprawl below him, he placed his feet on anything that looked solid: a brick embedded in the sludge, a partially submerged plank, the top of a section of pipe. There was hardly anyone around. It was only when he reached the phone box clamped to its pole that he realised the extent of the flooding in the area. The stench of sewage clawed at his nostrils. Three children were splashing hysterically outside their home in the first row, the water reaching their knees. He made his way along the gummy slope to the next row, his feet sinking into the brown ooze. Here too the water was rising. A twist of clothes, some plastic basins, a palm frond and then a curled chappal drifted idly along in the current.
Shankar tucked the package into his waistband and rolled his jeans up to his knees. He took off his chappals and strode into the water, telling himself he was mad. But his conscience would not allow him to turn back. He knew that Uma lived here alone and he could not simply return home without seeing if she needed any help. His toes sank into the moiling sediment as he pushed against the water, past a drenched mattress propped up against a smoke-stained wall. The doors of most of the rooms were closed but he could see that the water was flowing straight in to Uma’s room through the open doorway.
As he approached the room, he caught sight of Uma sitting on the tin trunk, her legs folded beneath her, a framed picture lying face down in her lap. She was completely wet, her hair clinging to the sides of her face and the turquoise from her blouse leaching on to her skin. The trunk was marooned in a fuscous pool, a layer of scum lapping against the back wall of the room where the rain was running down the brickwork. Every particle in the room seemed liquescent, caught in a state of chemical collapse.
Shankar rapped loudly on the open door.
Uma looked across at him in amazement.
‘I can’t believe it. It’s like an ocean in here,’ he said, taking a large step into the room.
‘In this rain, what are you doing here?’
‘I didn’t know it was this bad. I came to tell you something. I have some good news.’ He heard the incongruous ring of his words and his features creased into an embarrassed smile.
‘But first you have to get out of here. You’ll get sick and who knows when this rain will stop.’
‘I’ll tell you, but first just come with me.’
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere dry. Or do you want to sit here in this gutter all night?’
‘But where will we go?’
Shankar paused as he looked around the room.
‘Look, I’ll be back in five minutes. Just wait.’
Uma watched him wade across the room and disappear to the right of the open doors. In front of her, a plastic chair, the only piece of furniture in the room, bobbed about idiotically. The clouds continued in their inexhaustible convulsions, wrapping the room in ribbons of water. Earlier that evening, moisture had begun to seep into the room through the floor, its crevices filling up and foaming malevolently with the liquid disgorged by the saturated ground below. The rain had then begun to pour down the walls as the rising channel outside beat at the door. The rows of rooms had been illegally constructed over a storm water drain at the bottom of the hill leading down from Mysore Junction. Every monsoon they were doused and sluiced, mercilessly beaten for a few weeks by the force of the storms. The torrents had nowhere else to go in that dense maze of battered structures; so they surged onto unmade beds, spouted up around rusting cupboards and spewed over shelves of aluminium pots.
Shankar returned to Uma’s room, his head lowered against the lashing blasts, brandishing several sheets of dirty blue plastic.
‘Where did you get those?’ Uma asked.
Shankar ignored her and stumbled through the water to the back of the room. A smell like curdled milk was everywhere. Tucking the ends of the sheets of plastic into his jeans and grasping the top of the back wall, he hoisted himself up, his caked feet seeking a purchase against the exposed bricks. Leaning one arm against the top of the wall, with his free arm he began to twist the sheets of plastic into tight rolls that he then stuffed into the gap between the roof and the wall. One section completed, he moved further along the wall and rose up again, his feet manically seeking a cleft in which to lodge themselves. As he tried to plug the gap, the room darkened further, the gloom and the dankness meshing into a miasma that swept to the edges of the room.
Shankar jumped back into the water, turned around and shrugged.
‘The water’s still coming in but it’s better. We’ll see. Come on, let’s go.’
‘But where?’ she asked.
‘It’s too far to go to Janaki’s mother’s house in this rain. We’ll go to my house and then I’ll take you to Janaki when the rain stops.’
Uma had no desire to go anywhere. She felt like a creature thrown up by the deluge who bore a natural obligation to witness the waters recede. But she also lacked the energy to protest. She slowly lowered her legs into the water, still clasping the picture of Shiva with one arm. Shankar did not offer her his hand. She followed him towards the doorway, taking tiny steps through the turbid pool, as if her feet had been manacled. Shankar waited for her to reach the row outside, his eyes avoiding her face.
‘I’ll try and close the door and then we can go,’ he said.
He tried to pull the door shut with all the strength he could muster but it would not budge against the heft of the water.
‘There’s no money or jewellery in there?’ he asked.
Uma shook her head.
‘Then let’s leave it and go.’
They worked their way through the flood to the edge of the surrounding slope and then laboriously climbed up to the main road, their feet disappearing into the greedy mire. Every now and then Shankar would turn around to glance down at Uma, catching sight of her outstretched arm as she tried to tramp up the incline without sliding into its swampy creases.
The tides of water continued to drum down. Shankar wiped the mud off his feet on a concrete slab by the edge of the road, slipped his chappals on and started the motorbike.
‘Why are you standing there? Come on,’ he called.
Uma hesitated and then shuffled forward. She sat down behind him, her ankles pressed together in a tense bind, her left hand grasping the rear grab rail, trying to maximise the distance between them. Her other arm pinned the picture of Shiva to her chest.
‘Ready?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, feeling like her legs would abandon her, founder and collapse onto the ground.
Shankar eased the bike through the overflowing ruts, blinking hard to keep the water out of his eyes. The road was deserted as they rode slowly towards the open fields that bordered the highway, the wheels hissing against the wet tarmac. Uma glanced down at the back of the picture of Shiva, now streaked with a web of fuzzy lines. Shankar’s back was perfectly straight and his shoulders tight with an inescapable awareness. Six inches of water and wind separated him from Uma and in that space there began to fan out the torturous wings of a new certainty. They brushed against Shankar’s vertebrae and paused over the nape of his neck. Uma felt them beat a hot gust against her ribs and cast a shadow over her face. The gap between them was not large but it was enough to accommodate the flailing realisation that, as they headed to Shankar’s home in the rain, they would not make it any further that night.